THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



them by heart. They then remain unchallenged as re- 

 vealed truths. 



The myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ 

 is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition 

 as a hundred other myths of other religions. Of the 

 three persons who are mysteriously blended in the triune 

 God, the son Christ is supposed to be begotten by both 

 Father and Holy Ghost, parthenogenetically through the 

 Virgin Mary. I have dealt with the physiology of 

 parthenogenesis in the seventeenth chapter of the Riddle. 

 The curious adventures of Christ after his death, the 

 descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension, are also 

 fantastic myths due to the narrow geocentric ideas of an 

 uneducated people. Troelslund has admirably explain- 

 ed the strong influence they have had in his interesting 

 book, The Idea of Heaven and of the World} The idea 

 of the "last judgment," with Christ sitting on the right 

 hand of the Father, as many famous mediaeval pictures 

 represent (notably Michael Angelo's in the Sistine Chapel 

 at the Vatican), is another outcome of a thoroughly 

 childish and anthropomorphic attitude. 



It is remarkable that this second article of the Creed 

 says nothing about "redemption," which forms its head- 

 ing [in Germany]. Luther has dealt with it in his 

 commentary. Christ is believed to have suffered a 

 painful death, like many thousand other martyrs, for his 

 conviction of the truth of his faith and teaching — which 

 reminds one of the more than a hundred thousand men 

 who were done to death by the Inquisition and in the 

 religious wars of the Middle Ages; but not one of the 



^ The English reader may usefully be reminded that Professor 

 Loofs, Haeckel's chief critic, and one of the foremost German 

 theologians, rejects these articles of the Creed no less than 

 Haeckel does. A glance at the pertinent articles in the En- 

 cyclopaedia Biblica will show how widely theologians now discard 

 these beliefs. — Trans. 



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